Doubling Down on Managing Up
“Managing up” is defined by Harvard Business Review as “being the most effective employee you can be, creating value for your boss and your company.”
For many of us, however, the image that immediately comes to mind when we hear the term is someone like Eddie Haskell from “Leave it to Beaver,” who sucks up to authority figures in their presence, (“That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing, Mrs. Cleaver!”) while acting like a jerk to those lower on the totem pole. This stereotype of “managing up” comes across as a manipulative and insincere attempt to stroke the boss’s ego and make yourself look good at the expense of others.
Rather than turning you into Eddie Haskell, what if learning to manage up more effectively is actually the key to improving your individual performance and creating a higher-performing team? Fans of the Indianapolis 500 know that racing teams require not only a skilled driver behind the wheel, but also a pit crew committed to keeping the car properly fueled, maintained, and headed in the right direction.
Like that pit crew, what if your ability to manage up in your organization makes the difference between taking the checkered flag and running out of gas on the final lap?
Here are a couple of ways to look at this issue differently, followed by some specific tips for how to “double down” on managing up.
Servant Followership
In 1970, management consultant Robert K. Greenleaf introduced the concept of “servant leadership” into the workplace in a powerful essay called, “The Servant as Leader.” This philosophy, which has been adopted by leaders across the world since then, teaches that the most effective leaders are those who seek first to serve others, rather than to accumulate power or prestige for themselves. Servant leaders see themselves more as stewards than as monarchs, committed to the growth of their individual team members and putting others’ needs first.
If you’ve ever been in an organization led by a true servant leader--even an imperfect one--you understand how transformative servant leadership can be, particularly if the example set at the top is replicated by leaders throughout the organization. Like a championship-caliber Indy Car driver without the right pit crew, however, even the best version of servant leadership gets an organization only so far without equally committed followers.
Putting a finer point on it, while there are only a limited number of leadership roles in our organizations, all of us are followers in one way or another. Individual contributors are required to follow their front-line supervisors. Supervisors then follow managers, who follow directors, who follow vice presidents, and so on. Even presidents or CEOs at the top of organizations take their direction from someone else, whether that be the board of directors, investors, donors, or ultimately, their customers.
Given how much time we spend following rather than leading, I believe we should value servant followership as much as we do servant leadership. For our purposes, let’s define servant followership as putting the needs of the leaders you follow first by performing your responsibilities with the express goal of helping them be more successful leaders who, in turn, can drive overall excellence on your team.
How would adopting this mindset change the way you view your job and do your job?
Give and Take
While approaching your job with a servant leadership mindset sounds noble and all, a more practical follower might ask the question, “what’s in it for me?” Quite a lot, actually, according to best-selling author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant.
In his book “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success,” Grant describes three styles of collaboration or reciprocity that are present in every corporation, non-profit, or other team: takers, matchers, and givers.
Takers are those who strive to extract as much as they can from others on the team while giving as little as possible in return. Analogizing your workplace to a playground, takers would be the ones content to ride on the merry-go-round while others are pushing. When it’s their turn to push, they suddenly decide recess is over and move on. You know the type.
Matchers are those who calibrate how much they are willing to give to be roughly equivalent to what they get from others on the team. Matchers are content to take their turn pushing, but only if they get equal time on the merry-go-round. You probably are this type based on Grant’s findings that most people on teams are matchers.
Givers, by contrast, care deeply about contributing more to the team than they take out. They are others-focused and intrinsically motivated to give to others without getting an equivalent amount in return. Givers are like the kid on the playground who was thrilled to do all the pushing so the other kids could enjoy themselves without needing to take his turn as a passenger. You remember having a kid like that in your neighborhood playground, don’t you? Don’t you? (Yeah, me neither.)
Grant’s research showed that takers seem to get off to the quickest start in many organizations due to their willingness to self-promote—that is, until the matchers catch on to their game and stop giving to them. While undervalued initially, Grant concluded that givers are actually the most successful category of contributors over the long haul due to their ability to build stronger networks, create more collaborative and creative work environments, and get the best out of their colleagues and teams.
By putting others first, givers not only strengthen everyone around them, but also leapfrog the takers to become the most respected teammates—if they learn coping mechanisms to avoid burn-out and being taken advantage of for their generosity.
Becoming an others-focused giver sounds an awful lot like servant followership, doesn’t it?
Tips for Managing Up
Whether you think of it as managing up, servant followership, or others-focused giving, there are some tried and true strategies for being as effective as possible in supporting your boss. Here are ten tips shared with me by people in my life committed to supporting me (you know who you are):
1. Solutions Not Problems: When problems arise, as they inevitably will, don’t just come to your boss with the problem to be solved. Be prepared to offer a proposed solution or response yourself. Even better, come with several options along with your recommendation and why.
2. Takin’ Care of Business: Business leader Harvey Mackay once said, “There is a place in the world for anyone in the world who says, `I’ll take care of it.’” The only thing more effective than telling your boss “I’ll take care of it,” is to actually take care of it and to do so consistently.
3. Learn Their Strengths and Limitations: As a Gallup Strengths Coach, I believe it is critical to learn both the strengths and the limitations of your boss to serve them well. For example, one leader I know has a great mind for strategy and an ability to make difficult decisions, coupled with a limited tank for interpersonal interactions. In response to this, I learned to streamline my presentations to him and front-load the critical issues and recommendation before he began to shut down. This approach proved more effective both for him and for me.
4. Learn Your Strengths and Limitations: Strengths and weaknesses are two-way streets, and it’s equally important to know which ones you bring to your role as follower. One of my personal “growth opportunities” is a tendency to become defensive in the face of criticism or questioning by others. To become a more effective follower, I’ve had to learn that what feels like criticism to me is normally intended as constructive feedback by the leader and to listen for the message they’re intending to convey without becoming defensive. What strengths and weaknesses do you bring to your role as a follower?
5. No Surprises: If you conducted a survey of CEOs of their pet peeves, I suspect being blindsided would rank near the top. Leaders are often insulated from the day-to-day happenings on their teams and rely on their followers to tell them the things they need to know about the status of an important project, workplace morale, or other critical team issues. Effective followers tell their bosses the news they need to hear, especially when the news is bad.
6. Find Out What Matters to Them: To help your boss achieve her goals for herself and her team, you first must know what they are, and the best way to do that is to ask her. If a leader’s primary concern is quality, that tells you what reports you need to run, what meetings you need to schedule, and what metrics you need to measure. Conversely, if your boss tells you that something isn’t a priority for them right now, you know not to bother them with it (subject to Tip 5--“no surprises”--of course.)
7. Tell Them What Matters to You: Among the competencies that vault someone into a leadership role, mind-reading is not one of them. Just as exceptional leaders make efforts to find out the goals and visions of their direct reports, exceptional followers pro-actively tell them. One of the best examples of this in my role as a leader is when a long-term strong performer on my team came to me to say that, while she appreciated the role she had been playing, she was ready for a promotion and would like my support. By sharing this goal with me, she made it easier for me to lay the groundwork for her advancement, which has continued to pay dividends for her, for me, and our team. Managing up well includes not making your boss guess what matters to you.
8. Keep Their Confidences: Trust is an essential component of any human relationship, and that includes your relationship with your boss. Nothing does more to damage a leader’s trust in you than hearing something shared with you in confidence being recirculated in the office gossip mill. Being trustworthy is an invaluable characteristic of an effective follower, and the ability to keep confidences is a prerequisite for your advance up the corporate ladder yourself.
9. Own Up: One critical way to build trust as a follower is by owning up to your mistakes (which are inevitable) and your shortcomings (which are universal). While it can be challenging to admit your mistakes to the person who determines your pay raise and performance review, doing so displays courage, vulnerability, and a willingness to engage in self-reflection—all of which can bolster your boss’s confidence and trust in you.
10. Speak Up: A corollary to all the other tips given above is that truly effective followers must be willing to speak up to their boss, even when it would be easier to remain silent. Speaking up includes sharing news the leader may not want to hear but needs to; respectfully offering another perspective the leader might not be considering; and being willing to tell them that “the emperor has no clothes” when no one else is willing to. It also includes speaking up to tell them about your contributions from time to time, so they have a complete understanding of your value to the team.
What other tips do you have for how to manage up well?
The ability to manage up is an under-appreciated and overlooked prerequisite for building a rewarding job and career instead of just punching the clock. If you would like to work with a coach who can help you double down on your ability to manage up more effectively, contact me at mike.tooley@upstreamprinciples.com.
Mike Tooley is a Co-Founder with Upstream Principles LLC, a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to helping individuals, leaders, and teams go upstream to discover solutions for their leadership and employee development challenges. As a certified Leadership and Strengths Coach, Mike is committed to serve as a guide to help others discover, and live out, who they are designed to be